Every now and then a film collides with real world events – and not always in the best of ways. Following the attack on the World Trade Center, film studios went into over-drive, re-editing film and trailers set in New York. In all, it is estimated, images of the iconic Twin Towers skyline were removed from some 45 new film releases, including Spiderman, Zoolander and Men in Black II.
Such butchery won't be needed in Red Sparrow. But anyone watching it, today, as the UK government lodge an official protest against Russia for allegedly attacking former military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal on British soil, will feel an additional chill. Not least as Charlotte Rampling, in her role as “Matron” at a training establishment for Russian super-agents – Sparrow School – teaches them the art of obtaining information by any means possible,including and especially sexual seduction.
The Cold War, she explains, never ended: it just shattered into a thousand pieces. The West turned to self-indulgence and corruption; while Russia, if it remains true to itself, will yet emerge as top nation. All the more scary for Rampling's harsh, matter of fact delivery of this speech.
This, though, is to get ahead of ourselves. If you read the blurb or watch the trailer – Russian Ballerina sent away to spy school, trains to be a cold, killing double agent – you may be mistaken for imagining this is a rehash of 2010 film Salt, featuring Angelina Jolie as a spy, trained at Russian super-spy school and involved in an is-she-isn't-she a double agent cliffhanger.
But Salt this most definitely is not. For Salt falls squarely within the genre of comic book espionage, in which the cool calm killer takes down a dozen enemy agents in one go without breaking into a sweat. It's Wham! Blam! Batman-style combat: violence as fetish; violence as something neat and tidy and containable. Whereas Red Sparrow shows violence in all its gory reality (I assume: because, to be honest, I don't know what it looks like when a person is garotted for real): and therefore it is not for the squeamish.
It is, rather, good old-fashioned cold war thriller, with more than an echo of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy to it. At the heart of Red Sparrow two narratives intersec.
In disgrace after sparking an international incident in Moscow, CIA Agent, Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) is ordered back to base and relegated to in-country work. But Nate is the only agent that a highly-placed Russian mole will trust, so he is soon back in the saddle, tasked with visiting Budapest where, it is hoped, his presence will draw the mole out of hiding.
On the other side of the fence, Dominika Egorova (Jennifer Lawrence) is a lead ballerina in the Bolshoi Company for Russia. When her career is destroyed as result of a tragic accident, her uncle, Ivan Egorova (Matthias Schoenaerts), a senior officer in Russia's SVR Intelligence Service, recruits her to Sparrow School – a place where gifted young Russians go to learn to be super-spies. Or as one alumna describes it: “whore school”.
Her first assignment, set by uncle Ivan, is to seduce Nate, gain his confidence and find the mole.
Is Dominika out of her depth? A defiant young woman set for a fall? Or, as uncle Ivan suspects, a gifted manipulator just like him?
That is the $64,000 question as the film weaves this way and that, first dropping very large hints that Dominika knows what she is doing, then taking her to the end of a very short tether where, it seems, her failure and instant death is inevitable. Just who is on whose side: who is in control, who is being played is a puzzle that remains unanswered until the final reel. Even then, I suspect, many will be left asking: so whose side was she on really?
Hint: do not watch this film alongside any partner, any relative, older or younger, who has a habit of nudging you frequently to inquire why she did that. Such conversations are more than ample justification for divorce, adoption or abandonment!
Though if you liked – and understood – Atomic Blonde, the chances are you will like this film.
Honourable mentions to Jeremy Irons as Russian General Korchnoi and to Ciarán Hinds as spook-in-Chief Zakharov. With a resurgence of cold war style thrillers on the horizon, his remarkable looks-like-a-Russian features should guarantee him no end of work for the next few years.
Four stars
